LOGIN to Teacher by clicking the arrows at the side of the page. You will be prompted for a user name and password.TURN PAGES by clicking the arrows at the side of the page, or by using the toolbar.ZOOM IN by clicking anywhere on the page.READ by dragging the page around when zoomed in.ZOOM OUT by clicking anywhere on the page when zoomed in.VISIT web sites or send emails by clicking on hyperlinks.

The Refl ective Principle A matter of urgency dO yOu Often find yOurself stuck in the middle Of the minutiae, acting but unable tO think Or even imagine a better future? if yOu dO, it’s time tO break the pattern, says daVid loader, as a matter Of urgency. You arrive at work after a restless night, only managing to switch off and get some sleep after you made a ‘to-do’ list at 3am. Now at your desk you review that list – 12 items that must be dealt with today and another fi ve that are less urgent. You answer the phone to fi nd that you have two addi- tional tasks, then check your email to fi nd another fi ve. You fear that a knock on the door will bring more – and soon your worst fears are realised. It’s 8.30am and already today’s ‘must-do’ list totals 20. Feeling frantic, you start at the top of the list, determined to work through it, but remember that you have scheduled a meet- ing with John, an executive team member, in fi ve minutes. As much as you’d like to cancel it, you recall that you had insisted John come this morning. You look in your calendar only to fi nd more meetings, some of which you decide to postpone. You phone the next person in your diary, Jennifer, to postpone her appointment. Four minutes later – and you’re still trying to fi nd an alter- native time for a rescheduled meeting – John arrives. Quicker, you decide, to proceed with the scheduled meeting with Jennifer. John, it turns out, is dying for a cup of coffee. That, you realise, will take more time, but you feel you have no option. Besides, a cup of coffee may help you to focus, so you go to the tea room, where you bump into Peter and, before you know it, he has you cornered about another issue. You feel like screaming, but manage a smile and politely but fi rmly explain that you cannot help him right now, and suggest he makes an appointment to discuss this further. Back in the offi ce, coffee in hand and with the door shut and the phone diverted to messages, you try to give your full atten- 36 teacher january/february 2009 tion to John. He has come prepared. He hands you a sheet of paper which you read: ‘So the urgent drives out the important; the future goes largely unexplored; and the capacity to act, rather than the capacity to think and imagine, becomes the sole meas- ure for leader ship’ – a quotation from Gary Hamel and Coimbatore Krishnao Prahalad’s Competing for the Future. You can’t disagree! Concentrating is now even harder. While John is discussing the school, strategic directions and his frustra- tions, your mind is on your predicament. You are the living embodiment of the prob- lem that John has raised, stuck in the middle of the minutiae, acting but unable to think or even imagine a better future. Somehow you manage to get through the meeting. You offer to address John’s con- cerns, but where should you start? Where might the time come from? Recruiting more people to help is expensive and you’re sup- posed to be reducing costs. And in any case where might you fi nd such an enlightened helper? Finding more time by delegating some tasks to others is superfi cially attrac- tive, but then you consider the team’s already heavy workloads. And delegation has its own problems: explaining tasks in detail, providing training and of course monitor- ing. You could potentially end up with more work without satisfactory outcomes. The day is unfolding badly. What should you do? You look at your desk with its depressing pile of papers, at the bottom of which is Brent Davies’ The Essentials of School Leadership. It catches your eye, so you pick it up and fl ick through it. Your attention is caught by the lines: ‘Strategic leaders have a dissatisfaction or restlessness with the present. This restlessness involves “creative tension” between the leader’s vision and facing the truth about current reality.’ Is your tension, you wonder, a crea- tive one? To use a cricket analogy, many of us play our innings on the back foot, responding to the ticklish deliveries of others, absorbed by the detail and forgetting to focus on the bigger picture of the game. In order to move beyond the defensive, to engage with the present and build for the future in a strate- gic sense, though, we need to be exploring trends and issues in education, understand- ing the threats and opportunities in society and spending time looking for and devel- oping alternatives that will better deliver learning. The reality is that we’re all buffeted by a barrage of bouncers that constantly take our attention away from what we know we should be focussing on – the strategic, the long-term, the future vision. I know how hard it is to break the pattern and take time out to refl ect and strategise, but break it we must if we are to create a better future. T David Loader is an education consultant and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. His latest book is Jousting for the New Generation: Challenges to contemporary schooling, published by ACER Press. Email davidloader@bigpond.com REFERENCES Davies, B. (Ed.) (2005). The Essentials of School Leadership. London: Paul Chapman. Hamel, G. & Prahalad, C.K. (1994). Competing for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.